The conventional cargo container currently used has generally a single side opening. The loading operation is carried on manually or by a forklift to stack cargos in order from inside outwardly; the unloading operation just reverses the direction. Therefore, the conventional loading and unloading operations require too much man power and working time. Furthermore, the cargos can not be stacked up to the top ceiling of the container due to elevating mechanism of the forklift needs some space for operation, thus the internal space of the container is not occupied with enough cargos; consequently to raise freightage.
In view of the above, the main object of the present invention is to provide an improved container which has caterpillar mechanism on the bottom portion of the container for fast loading/unloading of cargos, and its left and right side walls form two lateral openings respectively as the passages of cargos, wherein a caterpillar belt of caterpillar mechanism is formed by linking a series of caterpillar pieces having holes along the internal edge, and surrounding around two sprockets which are fixed on the two ends of two steel girders at the left and right ends of the bottom portion of the container. Also, a plurality of parallel rollers are provided equidistantly between the two sprockets for abutting on the internal edge of the caterpillar belt to rotate freely, so that the caterpillar belt can be held on a horizontal plane when carrying cargos on it. Moreover, at the portions of the two sprockets which are not surrounded by the chains where each provided with a stopping block to brake the two sprockets from turning after cargos being placed in position so that the cargos will not slide during transportation of the container.
In accordance with the present invention, the improved container having a caterpillar mechanism for fast loading/unloading of cargos, the process for loading/unloading can be carried by just using a conveyor which has the same level height as that of the caterpillar belt to abut on the opening of the container, and then pushing the cargos stacked on the conveyor into the container manually or by mechanical force at a time, or the cargos inside the container can be pulled out to the conveyor at a time. Alternatively, by using two conveyors abutted on the two openings of the container respectively, the cargos inside the container can be pulled out to one of the conveyors, while the stacked cargos on the other conveyor can be pushed into the container so as to finish loading/unloading simultaneously.